


The "Mercy Street" experiment

by destinationtoast



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: (the "science" in this case being done by the authors rather than the characters), For Science!, Multi, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-27
Updated: 2014-12-27
Packaged: 2018-03-03 20:02:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2885753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/destinationtoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two collaboratively written short Johnlockary fics inspired by the Peter Gabriel song, "Mercy Street."  In a single day, each coauthor wrote a first draft of a fic, then revised the other's draft.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Toast's original draft

**Author's Note:**

> This started with Jude asking me, "How do you write so many words?!" and me asking Jude, "How do you fit so much meaning into fewer words?!" Since neither of us could particularly explain our process, we decided to spend an afternoon & evening writing two fics for the same prompt ("Mercy Street" by Peter Gabriel), then revising each other's fics. 
> 
> This series of chapters shows the process and results. In chapters 1 and 3 are our first drafts. Chapters 2 and 4 show what we ended up with after we'd each taken a pass at the other's story. Since all of this was done in the space of a few hours, without planning, these aren't very polished works. But we're pleased with the results and thought others might also enjoy them and be interested in the process.

“Let’s take the boat out,” John mutters nervously for the second time.

“Wait until darkness comes,” Mary instructs again. “Trust me, John. I’ve done this sort of thing much more than you have.” They trade tight smiles. Like always, he doesn’t ask to hear the story.

John sighs. “He’ll be all right,” she tells him. She reaches out for his hand, flexing in and out of a fist, and she squeezes. 

She watches the swells and she waits.

* * * 

Anne stopped caring the night her father died.

He was a quietly sad man, but he held her in his arms, and she felt safe. Even when she’d done something wrong -- she was always getting in fights with other children, being disrespectful to her teachers, _mother died young, lashing out, you understand_ \-- he would hold her and she would know mercy.

His words were like bone, supporting her unstintingly in everything she did. He didn’t speak much… they’d go fishing and sit for hours, just riding the waves in silence. Or they’d spent an entire day reading in the same room, no words uttered. But when he did speak --

“See all those buildings? All those cars?” He would say on their morning walk. “All of those, they were once just a dream, in somebody’s head.”

Her father, the engineer. He always told her she could do anything she wanted, encouraged her to build from her dreams. She believed him.

After he died, she’d never done a thing but let him down.

* * * 

“Now?” John asks.

“Not yet.” The sun is still setting. 

“Moriarty, though. What if --”

“I know. But we won’t help any if we’re seen.” 

* * *

After her father died, Anne turned not to creation but its antithesis. Lying, stealing, fights, vandalism, property destruction -- she sampled them all savagely. Every once in a while, when flames swirled around her, buildings fell, cars crashed -- there, in the midst of it, she felt so alive. So alive and alone. Her father wouldn’t like it, but he’d abandoned her.

The corridors of pale green and gray, on the way to the principal’s office, became more familiar to her than most places. More than her own room, which was constantly shifting as distant relatives took turns passing her around. She was unwanted, and she didn’t care.

The school wanted her more -- or tried harder, at least, for the sake of her mother, who’d been a teacher. Anne was sure that wouldn’t last.

Another schoolgirl, Mary, provided a brief but pleasing distraction. The look in her eyes, the breathless gasp, the tremble in her hips as Anne pushed her up against the wall and kissed her lips -- something stirred in her at that. A moment of tenderness. A thought that maybe there was something there to build.

_No, don’t take the risk._

Mary followed her one weekend when Anne went to test out her homemade bombs on school grounds. Mary tried to get her to stop, but Anne didn’t listen. She lit a fuse, threw the bomb in the open window of the school. The explosion was more glorious than anything she could have hope for. She could only hear roaring in her ears as she turned and stole one last kiss from a stunned, horrified, Mary and ran away. She pictured the broken glass, pictured the steam, the school building now just a pile of component pieces, and she knew her life as she’d known it was destroyed and she didn’t care.

* * * 

Darkness falls at last, and she and John row silently across the water to the building that Sherlock hopefully has already infiltrated. She’s been a getaway driver many times, but never before in a boat. They sit there, in deepening darkness and now creeping fog as well, and they wait for Sherlock’s arrival -- or for his signal that he needs their help.

* * *

Anne took Mary’s name, then took a series of jobs.

Stealing was lucrative, and espionage -- pulling out the papers, in drawers that slide smooth. Killing even more so. Pulling back the trigger, watching the bodies drop. Every once in a while, a thrill of terror or destruction that made her feel something.

Daytimes were fine, but at night she woke crying, sometimes, from dreams of her father. Of what he’d say if he learned everything she’d become.

In the midst of robbing a church, she tried, once, telling someone. Confessing all the secret things, in the warm velvet box. She felt nothing. No mercy, from man nor god. She hardly deserved it.

* * *

“Mary,” John whispers, after they’ve been sitting nearly an hour by the building in question. “I love you.” He only gets soppy when he’s scared for someone’s life. “Maybe you should go --”

“I’m staying here,” she whispers back, squeezing his hand. “We’ll be all right. So will he.”

* * *

She took more and more ethically dubious jobs; it hardly seemed to matter. By the time she was hired to watch John Watson -- to see whether he was ever contacted by a possibly deceased Sherlock Holmes, and if so, to kill them both -- she didn’t even bother to research who she was being asked to kill.

By the time Sherlock Holmes contacted him, John Watson was asking her to marry him.

He’d won her over slowly, sneakily -- and because he was also her job, she hadn’t been able to run away from him the way she had from Mary. By the time she’d realized she was in love, it was too late to easily destroy it. Instead, she turned around and killed the henchman of Moriarty who’d hired her, and she was free.

She thought when she married John she was leaving all the destruction behind. For the first time, she didn’t miss it. He and Sherlock seemed to know the thrill she’d always chased, but to attain it without the utter annihilation of everything in their path. They knew how to live, and she was content to learn from them.

But Magnussen went after her, so she went after him, and when she shot Sherlock to stop him from learning her past and telling John, she shot him in the chest like she’d been trained, and she knew. She knew that she would always destroy everything she loved, and that there was no hope for her to truly escape her nature, and that she was utterly undeserving of mercy.

Somehow, though. Somehow Sherlock had mercy to give to her.

Somehow, after a long stretch of uncertainty, John followed him in forgiveness.

Somehow, she had another chance.

* * *

Now Sherlock is off chasing Moriarty -- Moriarty, who’s returned from the dead, who’s once again terrorizing England, and who is now the only living man who probably can link her to her past. And she and John are in the boat, waiting to know how they can help.

The signal comes -- a red light flickering in the correct window. John kisses her. “I’ll be back,” he promises.

“‘Course you will. Be sure to bring Sherlock -- and don’t make me come after the two of you,” she says with a grin.

He nods and jumps from the boat onto the dock racing toward the building.

She sits and waits, no longer grinning now that she’s not trying to reassure John. They need her to stay ready with the boat -- and at this stage in her pregnancy, there’s not much more she can do -- so she does. But it leaves her nothing to do except worry about both of them. 

It’s been a long, long time since she was worried like this.

Not since she was Anne.

She stares out at the water. 

“Father,” she says experimentally, in a hushed voice. “I was thinking.” it’s so hard to say, even out here by herself. She tries again, tugging at the darkness word upon word. “I was thinking that I hope we get out of this alive. Because I think there’s finally something I want to build. I think I’d like to build a family, with both these men, and our child. If they’ll have me.”

She pauses, then says. “I think you’d like both of them. I think you’d like me, now, too, and who I am with them. I think you’d be proud.”

She sits and she waits and she hopes and she worries, riding the water, riding the waves, on the sea.


	2. Toast + Jude's story

“Let’s take the boat out,” John mutters, not for the first time.

“Not yet,” says Mary. “Trust me, John. I’ve done this sort of thing before.” 

John sighs. They trade tight smiles. Like always, he doesn’t ask to hear the story.

“He’ll be all right,” she tells him. She reaches for his hand--flexing, restless---and squeezes. 

She watches the swells and she waits for the dark.

* * * 

Anne stopped caring the night her father died.

He was a sad man, quiet, but he held her in his arms and made her feel safe. Even when she’d done wrong--fought with other children, disrespected her teachers, _mother died young, she lashes out, you understand_ \--he would hold her. Would show her mercy. His words were like bone, unstintingly supporting her. He didn’t speak much--they’d go fishing for hours and ride the waves in silence--but when he _did_ speak….

“See all those buildings? All those cars? They were once just a dream in somebody’s head.”

Her father, the engineer. He told her she could do anything she wanted, encouraged her to build from her dreams. She believed him.

After he died, she never did a thing but let him down.

* * * 

“Now?” 

“No.” The sun is still setting. 

“Moriarty, though. What if--.”

“I know, John. But we won’t help any if we’re seen.” 

* * *

Anne’s behavior after her father died--lying, stealing, fighting, destroying what she could and vandalising what she couldn’t--was a savage litany. When flames swirled around her, buildings fell, cars crashed: there, in the midst of it, she felt so alive. 

So alone.

The corridors of pale green and grey that led to the principal’s office became more familiar to her than her own room, which was constantly shifting as her relatives took turns passing her around. The school kept her for the sake of her mother, who’d been a teacher, but Anne was sure that wouldn’t last. She distracted herself with--well. 

Mary. 

Mary’s eyes, her gasps, her hips trembling as Anne pushed her against the wall and kissed her--Anne felt something stir in her. A tenderness. A belief that there might be, after all, something to build and someone to do it with.

Mary was the one risk, Anne found, that she was afraid of getting wrong.

Afraid to keep taking.

Drive her away, then: Anne made sure Mary watched her borrow a book, find explosives, light a fuse, on the weekend throw a bomb into their empty school. The flames were more glorious than anything she could have hoped for. Her ears roared as she turned, stole one last kiss from a stunned, horrified Mary, and ran. She pictured the broken glass, the steam, the unmendable pieces, and she knew she’d destroyed her life as she’d known it, and she didn’t care.

* * * 

“Now?”

“Now.”

She and John row across the water, silent. Dock the canoe where Sherlock asked them to. Sit in deepening darkness, in creeping fog, as they wait for Sherlock’s arrival--or the signal that he needs their help.

* * *

Anne took Mary’s name and a series of jobs.

Stealing and espionage were lucrative, killing even more so. As she squeezed the trigger, as she watched the bodies drop, her apathy would burn away, and for a moment, brief and glorious, she would _feel_ : the thrill of terror, the raw joy of destruction.

In the midst of robbing a church, she tried, once. Telling someone. Confessing all the secret things in the warm velvet box. 

She felt nothing. No mercy from man nor god.

At night she woke crying from dreams of her father. Of what he’d say if he learned what she’d become.

* * *

“Mary,” John whispers after they’ve been sitting, growing steadily colder, for nearly an hour. “I love you.” 

He only tells her so when he’s frightened for her life. 

“We’ll be all right,” she murmurs. She squeezes his hand. “So will he.”

* * *

She took more and more ethically dubious jobs; it hardly seemed to matter. By the time she was hired to watch John Watson--to see if he was contacted by Sherlock Holmes, and, if so, to kill them both--she didn’t even research who she was to kill.

John won her over slowly, stealthily; because he was also her job, she hadn’t been able to run from him as she had from Mary. By the time she realised she was in love, it was easier to kill the person Moriarty had hired to manage her than to live without John.

When she married him, she left her old life behind. She didn’t miss it. She had John and Sherlock, and their life together was dangerous, was _exciting_ , without annihilating everything in their path.

Then Magnussen went after her. 

When it went wrong--when she shot Sherlock in the chest, like she’d been trained--she knew. She knew that she would destroy everything she loved. That there was no hope for her. That she was undeserving of mercy.

Somehow, though. Somehow Sherlock had mercy to give to her.

Somehow, after a long stretch of uncertainty, John followed him in forgiveness.

Somehow, she had another chance.

* * *

Now Sherlock hunts Moriarty--who returned from the dead, who is once again terrorising England, the only living man who would use her past against her--and she and John wait on Sherlock’s word.

A red light flickers in the third window from the left, second storey: Sherlock’s signal. 

John kisses her. “I’ll be back.”

“‘Course you will. Be sure to bring Sherlock, and don’t make me come after you.”

He nods, steps onto the dock, and races toward the building.

She waits, no longer grinning now that she’s not trying to reassure John. They need her to stay ready with the boat--and at this stage in her pregnancy, there’s not much more she can do--so she does, even though it leaves her alone to worry about them. 

It’s been a long, long time since she worried like this.

Not since she was Anne.

She stares out at the water. 

“Father,” she says, experimentally, her voice hushed, “I was thinking.” It’s hard to say, even to herself. She tries again, tugs at the darkness word upon word. “I think there’s finally something I want to build with both these men. If they’ll have me.” She pauses. “I think you’d like them. I think you’d like me, now, too. Who I am _with_ them. I think you’d be proud.”

She sits and she waits and she hopes and she worries, riding the water, riding the waves on the sea. 


	3. Jude's original draft (a 221b)

“John,” she says, adrift on the sea of their bed as he packs his razor, toothbrush, a duffel’s worth of clothes, “ _please_.” 

The door slams. The bedside clock falls to the floor. She picks up glass in a paper towel, cuts her palm, bleeds in a steaming shower, cleansed of all her names.

*

“My father named me after his mother.”

John stares.

She swallows. Remembers what it was to be carried, to be measured and found precious. “He loved me.”

John pulls out drawers until he finds, pockets, his wedding band.

*

He takes his winter coat. His scarf. Meets for a searching moment her eyes.

“She won’t know you, when she’s born. If she doesn’t hear your voice.” 

That night surrounded by silence she holds in her mouth the name of their daughter. Wills herself to speak it, to lean against the words in the dark.

*

She presses her mobile to her belly, the volume up high. 

_You’ve reached John Watson’s voicemail. If your name is Sherlock Holmes, stop listening to my messages before I do. Dickhead. Otherwise, leave a message._

“That’s him,” she says. “Your dad.”

*

Bright cold December and empty suburban streets and Sherlock’s hand warm in hers.

“I’ve lost him, haven’t I?”

_(He doesn’t know my name.)_

“He’s wearing his ring,” Sherlock says, ducks beneath a bare branch.


	4. Jude + Toast's story

“Has he said anything about me?” She doesn’t want to ask, can’t help herself. _Or her,_ she add silently. 

A grimace. “Not yet.”

“Well, shit.”

A laugh huffed upward in the cold October air. Then, “Are you sure you’re warm enough?” He takes his scarf and wraps it around her. 

She runs her fingers along the blue, fondly. “I am now.”

*

“John,” she’d said, adrift on the sea of their bed as he packs his razor, toothbrush, a duffel’s worth of clothes, “ _please._ ”

The answer was a door slam, the bedside clock falling to the floor. She picked up glass in a paper towel, cutting her palm. 

She bled in a steaming shower, felt her names washing away.

* 

“Sherlock, do something for me.”

“Anything,” he says promptly. 

“Oh, _anything_?” She raises her eyebrows.

They walk in silence for a moment while his blush recedes. She watches him and savors the feel of the grin tugging her lips.

She sobers soon enough. “Promise me that if you keep John --”

“It’s not a custody battle,” he interrupts, frowning. 

“Promise me,” she continues, insistent, “that his daughter will know him.”

*

“My father named me after his mother,” she’d offered, wrapping a bandage around her still-damp palm. 

John just stared.

She remembered what it was to be carried, to be measured and found precious. “He loved me.” She searched for comprehension, connection, in his eyes, but he turned away.

John pulled out drawers until he found, pocketed, his wedding band. She didn’t know what it meant, but she swallowed around cautious hope.

John took his winter coat. His scarf. Met for a searching moment her eyes.

One last try. “She won’t know you, when she’s born. If she doesn’t hear your voice.” 

That night surrounded by silence she held in her mouth the name of their daughter. Willed herself to speak it, to lean against the words in the dark.

*

“He doesn’t have to stay with me. He doesn’t have to forgive me. But he mustn’t hold it against her.”

“Mary. He can’t not forgive you.” November frost rimes the glove with which he hesitantly touches her cheek.

“You mean you want him to.” 

A beat. “Yes.”

*

She’d pressed her mobile to her belly, the volume up high.

_You’ve reached John Watson’s voicemail. If your name is Sherlock Holmes, stop listening to my messages before I do. Dickhead. Otherwise, leave a message._

“That’s him,” she said. “Your dad.”

*

Bright cold December and empty suburban streets and Sherlock’s hand warm in hers.

“I’ve lost him, haven’t I?”

_(He doesn’t know my name. His daughter’s name.)_

“He’s wearing his ring,” Sherlock says, ducks beneath a bare branch.

Her chest tightens. “Maybe...”

“Give him till Christmas.”

“If not --”

Sherlock turns, presses a kiss to her forehead. She turns in her hand the flash drive he’s placed there, reads the label. _JW voice rec. Dec 2014 (1/?)_

“It’s not everything he’s said this month. Just from the flat.”

She laughs. “Sherlock, you shouldn’t have.” Meaning it in all the ways.

He smiles and looks away.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to ShinySherlock, who gave us the Solock Peter Gabriel fic challenge in the first place, and to Strangelock, who was endlessly helpful and patient -- and providing of tasty treats and excellent company -- during the experiment.


End file.
